The Refrigerator

For as long as I have lived in my house (~18 years), I have had an upright freezer in my garage. In there I kept all our meats, ice cream and frozen/processed foods. You could always count on the freezer having a few pounds of bacon, boxes of sausage patties, chicken pot pies, and frozen pizza. There were always a few different flavors of ice cream — my favorite being chocolate chip mint — and a number of other “fast foods” that we could just throw in the oven or microwave.

Now that we eat a whole food plant based diet, I have very little use for a freezer. The vast majority of our foods get stored in either the pantry or the refrigerator. My frozen foods consist mostly of veggies, black bean burgers, vegetarian sausage, and leftovers.

The demand on my fridge is much greater now and my side-by-side model was driving me a little batty. The shelves are too narrow and my veggies end up in a heap on the bottom shelf. It was hard to find things in the back and leftovers often spoiled before I remembered they were in there. The side-by-side worked just fine when most things got stored in the upright freezer, but the plant based world needed something different.

Last week David and I went to pick out a new model, and this weekend Home Depot delivered us a shiny new LG French door refrigerator! It’s got more cubic feet and beautiful wide shelves! There are two large crisper drawers, and another narrower slide out drawer. I can actually see everything in there! I’m totally loving it!!

I love that I can see everything and it’s clean and organized! Hopefully it will remain so as we use it more.

I’m not saying that this way of eating requires an investment in a new fridge, but I do think it will make my life a bit easier…and will save on leftovers! Plus, I think I’ll save some money on my electric when I finally unplug that freezer! Just need to get it cleaned out.

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I think I mentioned that I’ve been making Ethan pumpkin apple muffins the past few weeks for breakfast. The recipe makes a dozen, so there really aren’t any muffins left over for my husband…or me, for that matter. So this week, I made an additional dozen of Forks Over Knives Cranberry Orange Pumpkin Muffins. These are equally delicious and pretty easy to make. Don’t leave out the cinnamon walnut topping; I think that makes the muffins.

For dinner tonight, I made thee vegan Stuffed Pasta Shells, a recipe from a college friend who is now a vegan chef. (http://40yov.blogspot.com) I will admit that I was skeptical of adding cinnamon and cloves to my “meat” (vegetarian crumbles), but the filling was quite tasty. I left out the fresh basil leaves and the vegan parmesan, only because I didn’t have either. Ethan and David really liked these and went for seconds. I also enjoyed this dish, but it isn’t something I would make on a regular basis because of the veggie crumbles…not a “whole food”. I try to keep processed foods to a bare minimum, but if you are looking to ease into a WFPB diet, then these crumbles are for you!